Lunch.com Launches Communities: Yelp meets WordPress meets Wikipedia

[SXSW] We published about Lunch.com when it launched in April 09 at Web 2.0. Lunch.com connects people with similar interests via the proprietary “Similarity Engine” and provides them a platform to publish and share opinions and reviews about various topics.

Today, Lunch.com announced the release of “Communities on Lunch” a new feature that allows users to manage their own review websites on the Lunch domain, with a combination of their own content and contributions from others. Anyone with a passion is able to become a community manager, using Lunch’s broad range of tools to create, select and share the most valuable content. Content creators can choose from ratings, reviews, wikis, lists, and Twitter-length micro reviews to express their opinions and share their advices. The community manager can set a simple editorial guideline by providing review templates to the community members to ensure consistency of content.

We have private beta invites,check the complete article.

Lunch’s magic sauce is a mix of Yelp, WordPress, Wikipedia, Facebook and Epinions; and it is best served with niche communities such as pet parrots enthusiasts, gluten-free diet consumers or strollers passionates: “Niche communities were my vision for Lunch from the start, because the best content is shared when you’re surrounded by people who get you,” said J.R. Johnson, founder and chief executive officer.

Lunch is in closed beta, I tried it briefly two days ago, opening the Ubergizmo community for gadget lovers on Lunch, and I encourage you to create your own community there: to become a Community Founder, enter the private BETA code CURIOUS at http://www.lunch.com/communities.

The platform is easy to use and you can get started quickly, using the Similarity Network engine you can rapidly view users who share the same interests, and share your reviews with them.

You can also discover the small set of Communities that are already viewable, having been created during the closed beta, ranging from Disney World fans and Green living, to Broadway shows and liquor connoisseurs.